Graham Greene: Loser Takes All (1955)

I SUPPOSE the small greenish statue of a man in a wig on a horse is one of the famous statues of the world. I said to Cary, ‘Do you see how shiny the right knee is? It’s been touched so often for luck, like St Peter’s foot in Rome.’She rubbed the knee carefully and tenderly as though she were polishing it.‘Are you superstitious?’ I said. ‘Yes.’‘I’m not.’‘I’m so superstitious I never walk under ladders. I throw salt over my right shoulder. I try not to tread on the cracks in pavements. Darling, you’re marrying the most superstitious woman in the world. Lots of people aren’t happy. We are. I’m not going to risk a thing.’

There is not much I can say about Loser Takes All other than it is a delightful story of a newlywed couple on honeymoon. I have heard Loser Takes All being compared to Coward’s Private Lives and just for once I have to admit that this comparison also came to my mind when reading Greene’s story.

However, where wit and humor and sheer slapstick in Private Lives shows a couple (or two) that is very sure of itself, Greene’s approach is different: His story is based on a couple who isn’t sure of anything at all, and in the course of the book, this uncertainty keeps the story interesting.

“ONE adapts oneself to money much more easily than to poverty: Rousseau might have written that man was born rich and is everywhere impoverished.”